Hey guys, I'm in need of some assistance.
My current campaign revolves around an artifact, I'll explain it fully:
The three characters are:
A tiefling monk, who was abandoned fron a neighboring nation and was forced to slavery in the Keledine Mines, until some explosion happened and he transformed from a human to a tiefling. He's got nowhere to go and stuff.
The other is another tiefling, but he's a mage. He went to the Keledine Mines to gather some resources for his little studies in the mage's guild. The explosion happened, and he was transformed into a tiefling, which are considered abominations in my campaign world, and no one lends them a hand or something.
The third is an elven murderer who cares for nothing but himself, the monk subdued him and forced him to work for them, which kinda works out for him, because he's inlove with the monk.
Anyway, they went to the Sanctuary, the land on which the Parthenon is build on, and by law they must be treated as equals and be shared with food and water. After a few days there, a troupe of paladins from the barony of Conaminster, a really fanatic city, worshipping Lathander, the god of light and healing, entered the land and declared about a village to the south which worships Rovagug, and must be destroyed.
The characters agreed to look into the village and find out what happens there. They found out the people were doing nothing wrong, worshipping Rovagug, but not evil-doing or something. They even befriended a bit with the old high priestess.
On their way, they saved a woman which turned out to be the daughter of the baron of Conaminster, Alicia.. The tiefling monk fell inlove with her, and taken her virginity. After a while they met the head of the paladin order, Deredus, which happened to be the husband of the Alicia.
He was so nice and befriended them, and the monk felt just so bad for doing this.
They went to Conaminster and declared their findings, and the paladins decided they should still disband that village. The monk felt it is wrong and rode to the village to warn the people. When he arrived he discovered that the old high priestess is actually a powerful Devil, using the faith to power herself, transforming the citizens into demons. She had amazing power, and slaughtered the entire army of paladins that came to disband the paladins, then opened a portal to hell (Oblivion style) and vanished. The characters closed the gate a banished the demons.
Later on, the mage started to get visions in his dreams about Deredus's soul being trapped in a shadowy plane, and he told him the only way to save him is to summon his spirit and bind it to the material world. The mage was convinced and convinced the entire group to go out to get the materials for the ritual to summon the soul.
After gathering the materials, they decided to summon the soul to the temple of Lathander in Conaminster. After the summoning happened, they discovered it was actually the she-devil, manipulating them to summon her again, she needed something in the temple. An ancient sword, blessed by Lathander himself- called the Sword of Mercy.
A sword of light and healing, never willing to strike an opponent dead, always subduing, and other stuff.
The devil twisted the sword to a Sword of Slaughter, and demolished entire Conaminster.
Now the characters need to destroy the sword, which grants the devil tons of power. Any ideas?
Thoughts on the story line will be appreciated. :)
The main trouble I'm finding with this storyline is that the supernatural powers of goodness basically appear to be asleep at the wheel.
People are getting turned partially or fully into fiends right and left, artifacts of good are being turned into artifacts of evil, and no one seems able to fix things let alone reverse the polarity.
Why does the sword need to be destroyed? Can't it just be uncursed/purified, maybe by sticking it through the head of the she-demon who cursed it? I mean, she turned it into the sword of slaughter. Is it the sword of slaughtering everything except demons? Maybe the way to turn it back into the sword of mercy is to use it to make her beg for mercy. Maybe the act of getting the demon to recant after being given a taste of her own medicine sends out a shockwave of mercy, de-tiefling-izing the two player characters and any other NPCs in the area who were also turned into demons or devils.
Right now what you're really needing is some variety of triumph for good, rather than just an endless holding pattern or things going even further down the drain.
I'm not saying you can't have a storyline of continuing horror, but you need to have at least a few moments of grace for the good guys to think they might have a hope of winning this.
Actually, they themselves told me they like it. They like the sense of impending doom, my apocalyptic storytelling. I do supply a few light-hearted moments, a lot of romance and just amazing dialogues and characters, but the main thing that happens to the world is that evil is at it's neck. My campaign world is about the dissonance of the light-fairytale-like surrounding and atmosphere to the gloom and dreadfull reality of the world.
If the artifact was corrupted... Then let there be a EPIC quest to purify it back to the way it was.
clearing things out:
the characters are level 5. and they are dealing with epic evil. The best they can hope for is stealing the artifact and destorying it.
crazy quest with seemingly unsurmountable odds where the fellowship of the sword have to take it into the heart of evil and throw it into a volcano... wait...
Artifacts generally take epic quests to destroy anyway so it seems like an epic quest to purify it would be the same amount of bother for a better end result.
so basicly it's a good sword turned bad and lvl 5 characters have to destroy it (because they can't turn it good).
I would go with "simple" (skillwise) task like : you have to convince an evil priest to defend a helpless paladin from certain death.
Altough as a GM I would probably let this turn the sword back to good.
However as the sword is from Lathander himself it seems, perhaps when corruption gets too big, he would destroy. So as your group isn't really from the good side (did I get that right) perhaps a paladin kill his own offspring moments after the birth with the sword would make Lathander destroy his own sword.
Edit: spoiler